Sometimes I like to call myself a foodie. Then there are times when I spend time with real foodies and I resign myself to being just a good eater. Nonetheless, thanks to some lovely Capital Region bloggers (Saratoga Food Fanatic and Chopsticks Optional), I was invited to check out a Vietnamese food tasting at Good Morning Cafe in Ballston Spa, an American brunch place.
Yes. Vietnamese pho at an American brunch place. You can say that out loud.
Here’s how the two incongruous meals come together:
A NIGHTTIME NOODLE CAFE!
You can peruse their Indiegogo campaign site, which has much more information than I will post here, but a quick recap: Good Morning Cafe owner Nancy Holzman and (hopefully) future Good Night Noodle operator Linh Sullins are coming together to transform Good Morning Cafe into a Vietnamese noodle bar. It will be open in the same space for three nights a week. Voila! Good Night Noodle.
With each bowl of pho sold, they will donate the funds to purchase a bag of rice for a family of 4 in Cambodia. You eat. They eat.
(If you don’t know what pho is, you REALLY need to push this campaign forward because you’re missing out. Or just click this useful link)
It’s an incredibly altruistic business model, and Holzman calls it “Direct Impact Giving,” or DIG. However, to get this new business off the ground, they are looking for YOUR help. There will hopefully be more on this on Time Warner Cable News in Albany next week, but until then, go BACK to their site. Wait, finish reading this first.
Back to the tasting!
There are again, other real foodies who will give commentary on the food better than me (check out Burnt My Fingers, featured on FussyLittleBlog, or Chopsticks Optional). My two cents?
These noodles, homemade chicken sausage, intensely rich broth (with low sodium!)…
Chicken meatball pho
and premium fish sauce you add in yourself…
Red Boat: high quality
all make this endeavor worth supporting.
Plus: a rooster!
Not to mention, it led to some great puns in the Twitterverse.
pho-ny 😉
So support Good Night Noodle, especially on Wednesday evenings! What does that mean? Stay tuned.
Trust me, once you taste that broth, you won’t pho-get it.
Innae Park 